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If you missed it, Magic Online made a pretty big announcement this week. Like nearly every change that has ever happened to Magic- online or otherwise- there has been a loud, negative response. In fact, many players seem to be selling out of Magic Online, as evidenced by this:
With fewer packs being awarded as prizes and Play Points being non-transferable, this is being heralded as a death knell for those who grind MTGO for profit beyond just playing infinite- if this was even a reasonable thing to attempt doing given the recent MTGO economy.
The negative feedback seems to come mostly from constructed players. With so little of the prize pool being trade-able, acquiring new cards by playing constructed is quite difficult. Alternatively, players who only use MTGO to draft don't seem to be impacted at all.
As somebody who uses MTGO for some constructed and periodic drafts, these changes actually appear good to me, and by this I mean for the type of experience that I derive from MTGO. I like MTGO for testing Modern, and mostly only play brews in Standard. This structure allows me to play more games with a smaller investment. This is clearly not the case if you're buying a lot of new cards, so again, there's definite downside when it comes to grinding and building decks if you're not using MTGO to draft.
Now, if you're into Daily Events, this change is ostensibly terrible. There's very little incentive to play a Daily Event with the increase in entry fee with what is decidedly poor prize support. Daily Events haven't worked with my schedule for some time, so again, this doesn't effect me but I can see where that would upset others.
I do think that being able to use Play Points to draft is great, and this looks to address the concern of low pack prices. Of course, the counter to that is that constructed players will just have fewer packs. I would like to see some manner of Play Point redemption introduced so that it's not just impossible to cash out, but I stand by that these changes are good with the goal of just using the client to play.
A link for providing feedback is provided in Lee's announcement, and I recommend contacting WotC through that medium instead of decrying that the sky is falling.
I sold out.
How that change won’t affect drafters? Drafts will be more expensive now that there won’t be grinders to provide cheap packs. Besides that the demand for constructed cards will go down and redemption alone will have to sustain the price of the cards or the drafters will suffer when selling the opened cards.
I can’t see how that change was good to anyone… It was just a rise of prices for everyone involved with mtgo. The problem to mtgo was the redemption fee change and large sealed events with ticket only entry fee ( ptqs and releases. )
Of course that cheap redemption was probably affecting real life card prices which is bad for wizards and that’s why they raised it to 25 U$.
Goatbots increased their buying price for Tix to $0.95/Tix today.
As usual, the apocalypse is promised by some few hours after the announcement. Dramatic conclusions are draw by a a minority (maybe the more active?) a MTGO users for something that may have very complicated implications on the MTGO economy (more complicated than redemption fees, suspension of large events or switch to V3/V4.
In addition, we are right at the beginning of ORI release events which, as for any set release, depreciate the market a little bit. A drop by 10% of single and set prices is all but uncommon.
Also, it’s pretty funny to see people making tables and comparing the old and new prize pay out and wins/losses using a booster (which value varies from 1.5 to 4 Tix) on the one hand and PP (which value is supposed to be stable, 0.1 Tix as it seems).
Claiming that 2-players queues EV lost 12.5% is really misleading and mostly false if you assume the value of a pack is 4 Tix. I could use 2.5 Tix for the value of a pack and claim that the EV of 2-players queues increased by 50%!?
Conclusion? You should be be buying singles et full sets and take advantage of this bigger price decrease.
The Goatbots reaction is rather unexpected, but they do want to take business from their competition. Sounds like they are optimistic.
Regarding payouts: Isn’t it just a fact that MTGO is paying out less compared to what it brings in under the new system? This means MTGO is becoming more profitable, and players are paying that profit.
I believe MTGO will recover, and I am excited to be a buyer over the long term, but I can’t see how this is better for players.
Perhaps they need to announce a gradual increase in price over several months, rather than a doubling of DE’s compared to a fractional increase in prize support, to give the market a chance to adjust bit by bit.
Have they mentioned anywhere if Play Points are tradeable or are they going to be like untradeable like the Phantom Points?
Yes, they mentioned that they are untradable, which is the major downside here.
Although I would assume that unless you have an incredible win % (like 95%) you should not come to a situation where you have more PP that you would know what to do with.
Unlike Phantom Points PP can be used to enter anything (or almost?)
I just did the math, and you need a 60% winrate to go even in the 2 player queue…this intuitively feels much better than what it was before. especially when I remember times where winning would net you 2.2 or even 1.8 tix worth of product.
Also did the math on dailies:
You need a 62.327% winrate per match to go even on play points thereby making a nice profit on packs (packs of which will probably be of higher value since less are being given out than before)
I don’t immediately see this being worse for the average grinder.
Also would like to add that I don’t think it’s fair to say that points are “not transferrable” since you can use them to draft which is like opening 3 packs (plus a chance at prizes).
That’s a pretty good analogy and fair point. Are we going to see more rare drafters?
Or people selling accounts.
Not transferable just means that you can’t trade them to other accounts.
foundomega wrote a very good piece on reddit
https://www.reddit.com/user/FoundOmega
he essentially points to the new changes as being short-sighted and anti-growth.
I think anyone who has a strong opinion THIS EARLY about something that will have extremely complex repercussions is primarily guided by emotions and secondarily by some kind of objective analysis of the new economic conditions.
At this point we have only had a few days to digest the new information and wizards has had easily over 1000x more thought put into it. I think the most accurate prediction will lie in thinking about what wizards is trying to accomplish. Are they trying to destroy their MTGO community? I really don’t think so.
Its not that hard to figure out actually. What they did was just a price increase of the packs and i don’t see how it can be good… Of course they can profit more if people accepts it and community can thrive but it was plain and simply a price increase.
Dailies costed a total of 96 tix and prized 33 packs which means wizards selling packs for 2.71 each.
Now they are charging 192 tix total. They give back 1040 play points which is like 104 tix so its net charging 88 tix per daily for a total of 18 packs in prizes which is equal to selling boosters via daily at 4.88 tix each.
Sorry miscalculated something they give back actually 1080 play points which means 108 tix. Thats charging 4.66 per pack. Its insanely more from 2.71 per pack to 4.66 per pack, someone correct me if i’m wrong please.
You are definitely paying more for packs under the new regime but they may be packs that are worth more by being more scarce. You could be in a sense getting a very similar deal for a very different price.
Ultimately it all remains to be seen how it works, but paying 12 tix for a daily will not feel good.
“…instead of DECRYING that the sky is falling.”
Are you saying the sky really IS falling?